David Veloz

David Veloz Quick Links

A film like Behind Enemy Lines reminds you of how the movies can so easily be used for government propaganda during times of crisis. During WWII, local cinemas were littered with the likes of John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Gary Cooper fighting for freedom and the American Way against Nazi bastards and ruthless Japanese. Vietnam and the Cold War also had their propaganda films -- Rambo, anyone? In more recent times, the Gulf War and the Serbian conflict have also become the targets of eager filmmakers, but the public hasn't really accepted these films -- apparently the scale of the conflicts has not been enough to make much of an impact on an apathetic populace.

But that all changed on September 11, when American support for patriotism and military might -- no matter who the adversary -- hit a sudden, fever pitch. And so it was that the spring 2002 release (a dumping ground for films with very low expectations) of Behind Enemy Lines was pole-vaulted forward to the holiday heyday of November 30, 2001, buoyed by sky-high audience approval at test screenings. You want your ripped-from-today's-headlines movie? You got it.

Well, there's nothing like missing a fad by a few years to show how really behind the curve you are. Permanent Midnight, the new film about the rise and fall... well, mostly the fall... of TV writer Jerry Stahl should prove to be the final nail in the short-lived, and now painful-to-watch, genre: the drug movie.

Perhaps best known as the chief influence behind the TV show ALF, Midnightis a simplistic retelling of Stahl's tell-all autobiography. Ben Stiller, the only remotely passable part of this film, plays Stahl with gusto, but twenty minutes of Stiller going berserk as a strung-out junkie are more than enough.

Violence got the star treatment in the early '90s. With much of America feeling powerless to stem the crime and gang culture that seemed to be on the rise, we began to react to the ocean of carnage that dominated popular culture. Congress held hearings about violence on television, the finishing moves in Mortal Kombat, and Body Count's otherwise obscure gangsta-metal single "Cop Killer." For a while, blaming the pervasiveness of fake violence for real-world murder and assaults came to be as fashionable as flannel shirts and ripped jeans.

And yet, America kept consuming it. Snoop Dogg sold millions of CDs, video games amped up the gore, and children could quote the grisly details of the O.J. Simpson murder trial as if it were written by Dr. Seuss.